Intimidating Databases and Code

I’ll be presenting tonight at the Southern New England SQL Server Users Group (SNESSUG). The topic is “Using DMVs as a Shortcut to Query Tuning.” It’s a practice run for my spotlight session at the PASS Summit, so if you can’t make it to the Summit, you should swing by Rhode Island.

Tonight’s Southern New England SQL Server Users group is sponsored by Idera. Our presenter is Scott Abrants of Iron Mountain. He’s talking about deploying databases using Visual Studio Team System:Database Edition. We have a good turnout with 12 people (yeah, we’re small).

Scott’s presentation was a lot of fun and very informative. He’s very involved with automating his deployments to a fare-thee-well. He really has Visual Studio dancing and singing. It was a very thorough overview of the VSTS:DBE soltuion. Other user groups should be jealous that we got to see this presentation.

Tomorrow, Wednesday April 14th, is the next SNESSUG meeting. We’re going to get a great presentation from Scott Abrants on using Visual Studio Team System for database deployments. I saw Scott presenting this at SQL Saturday:Boston to a packed room. If you didn’t get to see it then, come on down to Rhode Island tomorrow evening. You won’t be sorry.

Aaron Bertrand showed up to teach us tips and tricks for SQL Server Management Studio. We had to move our meeting night because of a conflict at our wonderful host, New England Tech. But we still had 12 people show up. For SNESSUG, that was a good turnout. I gave away some swag that I had received from Microsoft and some stuff that we had purchased. Bribary works (at least that’s my theory, so feel free to bribe me, whenever).

Aaron’s presentation was great. He’s just showing nothing but meat. There’s no fluff. He’s just showing a series of tips & tricks in SSMS and explains why you want to use them. First revelation, -nosplash has no effect whatsoever on load time. He called it a placebo. It just kept going from there. Aaron’s stated goal was to make everyone in the audience say “wow” or “cool” at some point during the presentation. I’m pretty sure he succeeded. The first one that got a lot of people is when he demonstrated setting the connection color so you can track different connections visually on your screen. My personal one was the Registered Servers import list so you can maintain a common list, move copies around, share registered server lists within your team… I love learning stuff at a good presentation.

Barbara Sampson, SNESSUG Treasurer, did a demo of ApexSQL’s SQLEdit. It’s a pretty powerful TSQL coding and scripting tool. There’s a lot of functionality that worked in a very snappy way during the demo and looked great. I may need to spend some time with their products to see if we can put them to work. As part of the sponsorship, we gave away a license for the Apex SQL Univeral Studio. Quite a prize.

I was very excited to see AJ’s presentation for a few reasons. First, because he presented on DMV’s, based on an article he wrote that will soon be published in SQL Server Central. Next, because AJ is presenting for the very first time (and it’s a shame he didn’t get a bigger audience). Finally, because assuming he likes it and works with it, then SNESSUG has another speaker (it’s hard to get people to speak in Rhode Island).

He was great! He broke down the discussion by identifying common situations, such as, what is running on the server right now. Based on the situation, AJ showed which DMV’s or DMF’s would help you answer the question or address the situation best. His knowledge was good, presentation skills were solid, he explained things very well and definitely said “uh” a lot less than I usually do. It was a useful bit of knowledge, well presented and well received. Congrats AJ, well done.

We had a good night with 13 people attending. I ran unopposed for president of SNESSUG for my second, and final, term. We were graced with the prescence of Jeff Moden, MVP and on of the top posters over at SQL Server Central. He was just visiting. He’s a great guy and I was very happy for the chance to meet him in person. Jeff is going to be at the PASS Summit this year, so you too can have a chance to meet him.

The presentation was on SSAS and SSRS by Sunil Kadimdiwan. He did a full introduction of cubes from Excel to Analysis Services, all with the purpose of showing how to generate good reports using Reporting Services. Attendees were very interested in some of the security settings for Analysis Services. Sunil walked us through the use of BIDS, or Business Intelligence Development Studio, to build & modify cubes. The presentations were well received. Interestingly enough, he used very few slides and spent all his time working through examples.

Then, the fire alarm went off. We lost about 20 minutes.

Sunil came back in and finished up on Reporting Services. He’s a trooper.

I presented last night at the Cape Cod .NET User’s Group. What a great bunch of people. About 20 people showed up at the nice facility they’re using, Venture Think Together. A little pizza and a little chat and the meeting got started. Marcia McLean, their president, gave me a nice little introduction and I went through my slides. As I did them, I kept thinking about some of the advice offered up by Brent Ozar yesterday. Suddenly my slides seemed so wordy. It started to throw me off, but I just ignored it & plowed on. Overall, I think the presentation went well. I hit a couple of snags on some of the examples that I’m going to tweak before I present this at the PASS Summit in just a few weeks.

If you don’t subscribe to the Simple-Talk newsletter, why not? This month’s newsletter is chock full of interesting stuff, a DBA checklist from Brad McGehee, a workbench on keys, an article on how covering indexes are faster than clustered indexes (they are too), and an article on why one DBA is learning PowerShell (I want to, but my spare time is taken up with writing a new book). All great stuff and worth reading.

I’m going to be reading all these articles, but the most fascinating piece of the current newsletter is the editorial by Tony Davis. I was actually a little shocked by it. I’m a PASS volunteer for the Special Interest Groups and the Editorial Committee. I’ve attended the last three PASS events. I’m the current president and one of the founding officers of a PASS chapter (Southern New England SQL Server Users Group, come visit us). This year, for the first time, I’m presenting at PASS. So, while I’m not on the board, I kind of feel like I’ve got some vested interest in PASS. When I first read Tony’s editorial, I was shocked and a bit defensive. I’ve really enjoyed my involvement with PASS and I know that the volunteers that help run the thing put in a lot of their own time to keep it going. But after reading it a second time, I can’t disagree with Tony. As a matter of fact, I’ve said most of his criticisms myself. The organization does need to improve in general and, I think, better define it’s mission. The Summit itself is wonderful, as Tony outlines, but PASS, the organization, really does need to improve itself.

Go to the Summit. See for yourself the terrific program. Better still, volunteer to help improve PASS or to help out with your own local users group.